Trouble
by prodigaldaughter13
Summary: I think that the worst part of it all wasn't losing him. It was losing me.


_I think-I think when it's all over, it just comes back in flashes, you know? It's like a kaleidoscope of memories. It just all comes back. But he never does. I think part of me knew the second I saw him that this would happen. It's not really anything he said or anything he did, it was the feeling that came along with it. And the crazy thing is I don't know if I'm ever gonna feel that way again. But I don't know if I should. ._

_I knew his world moved too fast and burned too bright. But I just thought, how can the devil be pulling you toward someone who looks so much like an angel when he smiles at you? Maybe he knew that when he saw me. I guess I just lost my balance. _

_I think that the worst part of it all wasn't losing him. It was losing me._

I wasn't exactly innocent when he met me. I was Three-Continents Watson, and though I'd fallen on hard times, I still maintained some of my luster. Mike Stamford knew I could hold my own, and I think that's part of why he introduced the two of us. He knew that while Sherlock went off on a tangent or a was prancing around all peacockish and ridiculous, that I would still be standing there, steady and unflappable, ready to reel him in before he flew to high. But then I saw those heights, and oh, how I wanted them. I wanted to scrape the clouds along with him, to fly with him as he spiraled higher and higher.

It was the one thing Mike hadn't counted on- that instead of limiting his addiction, I would find myself addicted too. Perhaps even more than Sherlock was.

Really, though, I wasn't addicted as much to the flying. I was addicted to the man. At first I didn't want to admit it, but I knew he didn't care at all what I, or anyone else, thought. He had his own scintillating mind to have for company. He kept me on for entertainment, I suppose.

He'd do this thing, this strange thing; he called it his Mind Palace. The man's body could be sitting right next to me, or be sprawled upside down on the couch, or perched like a bird in the chair, but the actual _man_, that brilliant brain of his, would be miles and miles away. And honestly, I should've seen it coming, and it's all on me for discounting my instincts, something a soldier should know better than to do.

One time he walked into my room after I'd woken from a nightmare. Now, any other time, if a man saw me with tears still wet on my face, I'd have punched him as a distraction and gotten away clean. But this time, I couldn't bring myself to do anything but blink at him. And he blinked back. And then he left, closing the door courteously behind him.

No apologies, not even the sort that people spout out when they really don't mean it. Sherlock Holmes never apologised. Not for leaving body parts in the refrigerator, not for making new widows hysterical, and certainly not for failing to comfort his screwed-up flatmate.

Not even when he was the reason you were having nightmares.

You see, after the whole… Moriarty debacle, my dreams of the war had stopped, and been replaced by dreams of drowning, of being covered in water and wrapped in the stench of chlorine until it smothered me. And I knew he knew, and he knew that I knew he knew. And still, he feigned ignorance. Too much sentiment for him to be comfortable talking about it.

And if, after his Fall, my nightmares left behind the reek of chlorine and moved on to the cold smell of rain and the sound of a body hitting pavement, well, he wasn't around to know, was he? I tried to move forward, leave him behind, even as people around me saw who I was and hissed that Sherlock had been nothing but a fraud, a fake, and all-around lout. Not that he wasn't an all-around lout, but he was _my_ all-around lout, and I was the only one who got to harangue him for it.

Of course, he wasn't around to hear the times I got kicked out of the pub for punching a patron who'd made a wrong comment about him. He wasn't there for the times Greg had to bail me out, or pull some strings to get me out of trouble. And even Greg, after some time had passed, gently mentioned that perhaps Sherlock hadn't been all he'd seemed.

That was when I stopped going round the Yard. And when I moved. Two years since his death and I was in a new flat. But still he haunted me, his every movement forever burned into my mind.

He showed me the most- incredible places and things. Took me to brand new vistas, showed me a world I never imagined had sat just below the surface of the one I knew so well. Opened my eyes and made me see, really _see_. I took in so much more of the world, even the things he didn't think were important. I saw them so he wouldn't have to, so he could tune it out and focus on the important things.

And I couldn't make it stop.

Sherlock had always complained that his mind was too loud, was too busy, saw too much, and he couldn't get it to shut down. I'd never fully understood what he'd meant. Now I was painfully aware of it.

I'd be walking down the street, and people's life stories would paint themselves before my eyes. I could see them, maybe not as accurately as Sherlock could, but certainly close enough to give me a general idea of their person. And with each deduction, I'd hear his voice, hissing in my ear as the stories appeared. It was loud, maddening, and it never went away.

I still couldn't go near Angelo's, or any take-out place in that part of the city, because I'd spend the time silently looking for evidence of him in the area. And I'd find it, everywhere, but I'm never sure if it was real evidence or just my mind providing what I wanted. It could've gone either way, in all honesty. But more likely than not, it was imagined. Sherlock… he was many things, but he was rarely cruel. I'd only seen that cruelty once, when Sherlock had lashed out at the man who threatened Mrs. Hudson. But pretending to be dead- that was a cruelty even Sherlock wouldn't inflict on someone.

Because he knew how much I loved him, even before I did, because the man knew everything. And though he didn't feel an iota of love towards me, or anyone for that matter excepting himself, he wouldn't intentionally force me to suffer. Not like this.

In losing him, I've lost the best part of myself.

_I don't know if you know who you are until you lo_


End file.
